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Manhattan! Did we really win? It felt like a blood bath out there all week and to come out on top feels a bit unbelievable really. In January Mike Dodd, Rosie and I started exchanging some emails about our goals for the year. We all listed individual and collective goals we wanted to accomplish for the year and, I’ll have to look it up for confirmation, but goal #1 on all our lists was to “Win Manhattan”!!! What is it that makes MB Open so special. Casey Jennings says he “would give up 5 of his 6 open wins to have 1 Manhattan win”. Well I can only tell you why it is so special to me.

Name on the pier. What is so magical about having you’re name engraved there? Well you’ll have to walk along the pier and read the names of the winners year by year and tell me if it impacts you the way it does me. Von Hagen, OB, Hov, Dodd, Sinjin, Randy, Karch, Kent, AJ, Fonoi, Dax. Maybe these names don’t mean a lot to some people, but they mean a lot to me. I see the guys that worked the hardest, wanted it the most, gave it everything they had for our sport and came out on top when they had a chance to win the big one. The coolest part isn’t having my name along side these champions. The coolest part to me is being engraved together JAKE GIBB/SEAN ROSENTHAL. It probably sounds cheesy to most, but I love the kid and now we’re on that pier together. I won in 05 with Steino and I’ve been trying to figure out why this one means so much more now? I think it’s because I’ve been groveling with Rosie for 4 years now. When I was winning with Steino I was so new to it that I just didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to win MB Open. I didn’t get why it is the most coveted of all Opens. I didn’t get how privileged we are to be professional athletes. I didn’t get that you treat it as a once in a life time opportunity. Now I do and damn it’s SWEET!

Playing in front of the Manhattan Beach crowd is the coolest. They get good volleyball. They understand great plays and they applaud them. The stands were not just full of volleyball fans, but legends as well. In case you didn’t notice the AVP took MB old school this year. They built smaller stands, no ticket sales, 64 team draw etc.. They also staged an exhibition of the Six Man followed by a Legends (South Bay vs North Bay). The best part of that to me was that all these legends stuck around for our final. We need the support of the “legends of our sport”. I think they don’t realize this sometimes cause I hear them complaining about the size of the court and the rule changes etc, but that debate is useless. We players idolize these guys and we can honor them better when they respect and honor us. Enough said on that.

All week leading up to the MB Open I was visualizing putting away the championship point. It was always different scenarios, by either a block or a sideout or an ace. I normally don’t like to look ahead because you can lose focus on what is at hand if you do this during the match. But for some reason this week I couldn’t get it out of my head. This would have been a much better story if I would’ve actually put down the last spike attempt I had to win the open instead of getting soft blocked back to Rosie so he could put it down. BUT, it was strange nonetheless.

We had some knarly matches. We played 8 matches in 3 days. It’s a distinct possibility that Mike Dodd could have won this open for us. We had just gotten crushed in the first by Scott/Hyden (the #1 seed) 21-13 in the quarterfinal. Mike Dodd came to our box hunched over and nearly trembling said, “You guys are playing like you have 10 chances to win the Manhattan Open?! This is a once in a life time opportunity. You have Hyden/Scott to go play Keenan/Lucena to go to the finals! Then we have Todd n Phil who we owe a loss!! Now let‘s go out there and yell and get mad at eachother when we make mistakes and show we want this!!” Well if you know Mike Dodd you know he is normally a super low key guy that doesn’t show a ton of emotion. To see him that emotional kind of woke us up I think. We came out and won the next two against Scott/Hyden and then pulled out a close one against Lucena/Keenan 15-13 in the 3^rd. Then we found out Wong/Olson beat Todd n Phil in 3 setter. Wong n Olson beat us last year in Manhattan so it was on! I felt like we played really clean volleyball in the final. Matt n Kevin played great but I think Rosie played such a phenomenal game that he put us over the top. Good job Hosie (Brazilian way of saying Rosie‘s name)!! Oh and btw the thump you had down the line was SICKENING!! “Vegas Line” might have to be called “Manhattan line” after that display. Wow!

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Ok so I wrote this blog 4 months ago and forgot to post it.  Nice job Jake.  Here it is anyways:

On a plane to Brazilia, Brazil.  We were bumped on our original flight that left Monday so now we get in about 12 hrs before we have to play.  Not ideal but we got upgraded so it could’ve been worse.  United has stepped up there business class seats by the way.  I could actually lay flat and you have your own cubicle so you’re not crushing down the person behind you.  I slept like 5.5 hrs which is huge for me.

I can’t believe the first two AVP tourneys have come and gone.  They were pretty bitter sweet.  Anytime you don’t win I think you feel like that.  It’s kind of brutal really because there are 31 teams each week that lose their last game and are leaving the beach bummed about it.  On the other hand I’m always stoked to make it to the final cause then you’re atleast giving yourself a chance to win.  And the incentives from sponsors for being on TV is always nice.  As I write this I wonder, why do I feel like I need to justify a 2nd place finish to myself???  Because losing sucks period and maybe I’ll look back and be happy about playing in finals, but right now I just want to win Opens period.  I guess that’s why…??

The off season was interesting.  I golfed on average about 100 holes per week thanks to my friend Bob at Goosecreek.  I got away from volleyball for several months and that was much needed.  Last year was a fun, exciting, but also a very stressful year.  With the Olympic qualification stress then the Olympic games pressure, I was definitely needing some time away from volleyball.  I know Sean certainly took some time off.  I mean I’ve heard of a kid blowing off some steam before but he took it to a whole new level.  I won’t go into details.

We finally started training on the beach in about mid Fe